otherwise known as: i'm a fool to assume that draconua wouldn't immediately deface palace property



How fitting that the Palace's gardens should host a similar splendor; a cavalcade of topiaries and grassy sprays lined every patch of ground unoccupied by polished white stones and gravity-defying fountains. It was all awash in an amaranthine glow. All of the groundskeepers should be no less than proud of their own work —

— and mortified for it, as a valkhound alighted on wings large enough to sweep delicate blooms from their stems, claws large enough to deliberately carve up bits of sod as she walked, leaving corrupted-black clots of it in her wake. Let those poor keepers weep for what was lost.

Cepheus had swept past her field of view many times, passing by like distant houses out the car window. A place of Kings, formed by aesthetes with the hope of building something unchaotic by nature, no doubt.

Draconua, trampling the garden and snuffling in the hedgerows like a shaggy, merle-coated dog seeking treat euphoria, was wholly unimpressed.

Unimpressed, until she passed by a statue just tall enough to look her in the eye.

A hand lifted — reaching not too far away from the rest of her body — to grip a statue by its façade, overgrown claws scraping against sculpted jawlines and tear ducts. Flat-faced creature, this one represented… and how rare was that? Draconua recalled seeing some at the Deathmatches; one shepherding another from the sands, one more in the stands — and hadn't those three been in Draco at one time or another, too? Beady, dark eyes narrowed, studying the Simian features with absolutely no true interest. It was no familiar face.

Oh. She couldn't help herself. It was too pretty.

There was a rather resounding crack! as the valkhound sharply brought up her other arm, leaning into it with all her brutish weight and decapitating the statue. Crystalline dust sputtered like blood from the wound, and the head itself sent her stumbling a step or two to the side with a spurt of gasping laughter.

Dropping from her hind legs onto three, hoisting her prize up to see it once again, Draconua laughed without an ounce of shame despite knowing what guardians were assigned to such a place.

@Aethril

There was a time when Aethril slept under hazy, twilit skies. The air was fresh with lavender and laundry drying in the pale light. Her chest was light; rarely did she acknowledge the beating of her own heart. Sometimes a cat (Barney-- his name was Barney) would lay with her in the long grass, or on her belly, or curled up on her hair purring near her face. Aethril dreamt of these little memories often, when she wasn't plagued by nightmares of being hunted and killed by nefarious rebels.

She pined for that simplicity.

The Valkhand's luxury came with a price. She was powerful, she lived in comfort, she had a myriad of creatures making sure her stay in the caves was peaceful and welcoming but nevertheless, discomfort weighed on her mind. The Oilstone gem embedded into her sternum felt entrapping at times. It felt as though there wasn't enough space in her ribcage for her lungs to breathe and her heart to beat-- and no matter how hard she tried not to focus on it, she felt that thump-thump-thump drumming away in her ears.

This kind of over-stimulation led to... episodes. Aethril managed to avoid them (when had the last one been? When she watched that foul creature's limbs tear from its body by hellswans, or when she had flipped an owl inside out?) for the most part. She had great control over the Creator's magic and its effects on her mind, but it wasn't foolproof. Aethril wanted the taste of blood in her mouth. She wanted her heart to beat louder and faster. She wanted to tear something small and fragile apart.

She couldn't combat these urges with naps in the courtyard for much longer.

And how fitting that the Palace's gardens had a visitor. How fitting that Draconua was experiencing an 'episode' of her own, and how fitting that tucked away into a corner surrounded by sprigs of lavender, Aethril had been dozing away in a loose shirt with the sword she had been training with.

When the monster tore up grass and roots with her talons, Aethril awoke. Getting Draconua to stop was as simple as that: commanding her, scolding her, marching her back to Draco and leaving her with Vargas to deal with. For Aethril, however, it'd been at least two or three months since she had a good fight.

And damn, did she hunger for it.

Aethril rose and for a moment watched the Sleepless Chaos massacre a marble statue; crumbling it like chalk in her hands. She blinked the sleep away, and then she was marching forward, barefoot on soil and stone. "You've some nerve," the Hand told her; but she couldn't stop the smirk from growing across her face-- she couldn't stop herself from thanking whatever forces of fate for making Draconua so... Draconua.

A pulse of magic. The pain shot from her fingertips and up her forearm as violet-black lighting crackled and careened across the air, implanting itself into Draconua's meaty shoulder. There was something deeply euphoric about it, even as Aethril's fingers grew stiff and numb and the static in the air prickled at her face. Something extremely satisfying.

Draco could wait a few minutes, surely.

ROUND 1/?

100%

ATTEMPT: Electrocute Draconua
DEFENSE: None
INJURIES: None

@Draconua

"You've some nerve."

A grin, broad and far from placating, split across her face — veering from Duchenne to Cheshire territory. The severed head of the nameless made a hollow thunk! as it met the pavers, and ground while she braced herself on it and turned to leer down at —

Draconua's smile peeled yet wider. "I do! I cannot resist the thrill of that which makes me." Lethal points flashed dimly in the light as the choice words whistled past them. Dark eyes unseen past her skull-plate pinched upward and the thu-thu-thump! of her heart stuttered with raw anticipation. Her tail thrashed like a whip behind her, the length of it meeting another statue with a heavy slap.

Fire erupted through her nerves as a pistol-shot of electricity struck home — the musculature of her foreleg seized and stuttered, every tendon contracting in an instant and near-permanently tucking the limb against her chest. The residual crawled beneath her skin, smoldering with the stink of ozone; and wasn't that familiar? A strangled (and perhaps surprisingly subdued) shriek rattled from her throat as she pivoted. Oil and pus already started to clot the wound, gratuitous as it was.

The Sleepless Chaos, fueled by the audacity, crowed. "It seems you cannot either! What a raw, festering delight."

With a sickening shriiip! of shiny, perpetually scabbed-over flesh and skin, the valkhound's guillotine jaws dropped open. Despite her incapacitated leg, she stomped forward with no less than an eardrum-popping bellow; all raw excitement as she merely reciprocated what had already been cast.

She could feel the burn of entropy as it rocketed away from her arm, lancing along the fragile walls of veins and arteries and nerves as the quickest means of getting to her maw, which split wide in a telegraphed show — because where was Draconua without her dramatics?

The tang of copper and ozone made a filmy cling to the inside of her mouth as she spit a serpent's tongue of electricity and violence directly at the humanoid's stomach.

ROUND 1/?

81%

ATTEMPT: Electrocuting Aethril back
INJURIES: Severe electrocution to left shoulder

@Aethril

Pain. Forks of lightening connected with her gut and singed the cloth draping her shoulders. It left behind a criss-cross of violet-and-black webbing on the skin of her belly, smoldering like embers consuming paper. Her stomach churned and tensed-- and thankfully, Aethril had not eaten much that day, or she might have coiled over and threw up. As the burning melded into the same sensation of numbness and aching as her arm, there was intoxication in it.

"Is that all?" the Hand snarled through gritting teeth, her fingers clenching into her palm and nails breaking the skin. "Have you lost your spine? Having second thoughts?" Draconua didn't seem the type, at least-- not if she was going to trample the Palace gardens while knowing fine well who lingered here.

Still, if Draconua was going to fight back, Aethril wanted to taste her own blood in her mouth. She wanted to feel the blind rage that adrenaline offered. She wanted to--

She thought of the owl. No, not that far, she thought (quite reasonably). Magic flared and died out; faded away from her grasp before coming to fruition. Instead of backing off, however, her chin tilted upwards and she watched the Valkhound in front of her, nose wrinkling with a growl.

"Show me your worst."

ROUND 2/?

91%

ATTEMPT: choke out Draconua (failure)
DEFENSE: None
INJURIES: Burnt abdomen

@Draconua

A dozen eyes traced the path of a shot aimed true, and a sick curl of satisfaction roiled through her frame; it shuddered as she continued to plod forward, wings making a heartbeat snap through the air. Shattered hide still twitching and convulsing with residual electricity (and there was a palpable buzz as she approached, if it could be heard over the maelstrom in either of their heads —) she paused, if only to tilt her head.

Her face wrinkled in a wider, wider, wider smile, dozens of teeth on full display. "There is always worse, and all it would take is ONE—" she surged forward with an eager snap of teeth and snarl, deliberately missing by virtue of the distance between them, "but you've already signed yourself over to nonexistence."

Draconua tilted her head to the opposite degree, nearly completely sideways. "Good luck."

A spurt of Oily blood heralded the arrival of a slithering, black tentacle. Its mucous covering hissed as it met the air, and what had landed on the pavers evaporated. The hissing was matched by her own wail of anguish — not for the pain of the tentacle bursting from her own flesh or its intensifying grasp on her forearm, but the failure.

ROUND 2/?

80%

ATTEMPT: Grab Aethril by the ankle and throw her upward
INJURIES: Severe electrocution to left shoulder; tentacle emerging from front right leg

@Aethril

Aethril could have laughed, if she weren't just as irritated by Draconua's failure as the Valkhound herself was. Not that that little detail stopped her from doing it anyway if just to taunt the Sleepless Chaos; a hearty little chortle rose from her throat, but there was very little emotion behind it.

The theatrics were more important. "Do you think it that easy?" She asked spitefully. "What do you take me for? I'm not some rat you can snap in half."

Technically she was, if Draconua decided to use her mouth in the next ten minutes-- but that much didn't matter for now. What mattered more to Aethril was that reaching out to His magic was still resulting in pitiful failures; a weak pulse resounded in the air and the pressure dropped only briefly. Not enough to do damage.

Back to taunting.

"Whenever you're ready," she hissed. "I dare you. I'll wait."

ROUND 3/?

91%

ATTEMPT: choke out Draconua (failure)
DEFENSE: None
INJURIES: Burnt abdomen

@Draconua

"PROVE IT, THEN," the valkhound snarled, unheeding of the fluctuating pressure of the air, the stifling cold occupying her very bones, the presence laid before her in such peculiar tangibility — there was something there, writhing and coiling through the humanoid she'd never cared to remember the name of. It had been there when the Leviathan had called his ilk together before the Black Spire, when one's mouth got ahead of herself and she was rendered down to nothingness.

An ugly snarl twisted her maw downward. "Where is the one that makes one's confines null? Brings flesh to the surface in a passing glare?!" Claws hooked into the sod despite the impending sensation of numbness where her circulation was slowly being cut off. That mark of failure could wait.

"You'll find that waiting allows your end to march closer and closer!" came her roar, and she again aimed for the ground at Aethril's feet; and from that darkening spot emerged a whip-like tendril. It struck out for a bare ankle, to coil around it with the end of its length, and then heft the Hand up and to the side before — at last — trying to lob her high into the air.

ROUND 3/?

80%

ATTEMPT: Try again to throw Aethril into the air
INJURIES: Severe electrocution to left shoulder; tentacle emerging from front right leg

@Aethril

Draconua grew angrier; though Aethril couldn't tell if it were the beasts' failures or her own taunting that were contributing to it. The Hand said regardless, "were you jealous?" with a tone of mock-sympathy but this particular round of taunts did not last particularly long.

Try it! she might have said-- though if she were going to formulate anything better in response, it never came to her, for suddenly she was swept upside-down and soaring through the air like a bird. A bird that hit the cobblestone and skidded several inches on its shoulder with a sickening crunch as it hit the ground.

The tang of blood in the back of her throat. She spat the black ichor onto the ground in front of her-- and though she felt that surge of adrenaline coursing through her veins, the dip of her belly, the newfound energy tingling in her arms, for a moment, she couldn't move.

A stupid, broken bird. Shit.

ROUND 4/?

79%

ATTEMPT: set Draconua on fire (failure)
DEFENSE: None
INJURIES: Burnt abdomen, cracked ribs, stunned

@Draconua

Jealous?

She snarled. "Of the attainable? No."

It was no grand feat of dexterity, turning that bird so that every beautiful vestibule was exposed to the stale, stale cave air. Exposed to the Womb. The Sleepless Chaos — perhaps stupidly — thought herself capable of imitating it; though, she wouldn't demonstrate for this one.

No. Not for the fluttering little thing splayed across the stones when her jaws (and slightly blinded eyes) had missed a grab for the body sailing through the air.

Draconua loomed, sheer bulk blackened and haloed by the orb-light behind her. The sanguine of her face mask tilted, and Oil dribbled out of her maw in a disgusting glob. "Get up," she snarled with a lash of magic, "let me see your teeth." Another tentacle lurched from the earth, sweeping to clasp around a torso under the arms (so that something would catch when it lifted up) and jerk Aethril to her feet.

It let go only when she seemed even mildly steady or placing a tangle of limbs against the ground.

The Sleepless Chaos failed to step back and allow any space for her bellowing cry, all spit and saliva thrown directly at the Hand. "Show them!"

ROUND 4/?

80%

ATTEMPT: (Roughly) pull Aethril to her feet
INJURIES: Severe electrocution to left shoulder; tentacle emerging from front right leg

@Aethril

She breathed hard.

Copper in her mouth; pain in her chest. The beating of her own heart was deafening in her ears, but before she knew it she was being jerked around like a ragdoll and the soles of her feet touched the ground. Her knees tensed to keep herself upright, though she quickly found her own mind foggy and nonsensical.

And yet, "You've given no indication that it's attainable," she spat. Draconua wanted to see teeth? Aethril would show her teeth.

There was that adrenaline fueling her movements; the dip of her gut and the sweat beading on the back of her neck (or was that Draconua's saliva?) as she shifted, and with a burst of magic, exploded with a gout of roaring flame that latched onto the oil spilling from Draconua's face.

Like gasoline poured on a bonfire, the violet-black flames spread in a matter of seconds. Foul smoke billowed into the air as it burned both impossibly hot and cold at the same time, greedily consuming anything within its path.

ROUND 5/?

60%

ATTEMPT: set Draconua on fire
DEFENSE: None
INJURIES: Burnt abdomen, cracked ribs

@Draconua